Palestinian gunmen ride motorcycles as they drag the body of a man who was killed earlier Tuesday as a suspected collaborator with Israel, in Gaza City. Photo: AP

(UPI)

President Obama dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Middle East today, in desperate hopes of ending the week-long carnage between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

Secretary Clinton took off today from Cambodia, where she had been accompanying the president for his trip across Asia, according to White House officials.

Clinton is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and Egyptian leaders in Cairo, American and Palestinian officials said.

As Israeli forces continue to mount at the Gaza border for a potential, bloody ground attack, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the conflict has become an “alarming situation.”

“This must stop, immediate steps are needed to avoid further escalation, including a ground operation,” Ban said in Egypt, leading global efforts to end the fighting.

The UN chief arrived in Cairo yesterday and was to meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem today.

“Both sides must hold fire immediately,” Ban said. “Further escalation of the situation could put the entire region at risk.”

Despite the ongoing rocket attacks from both sides and seemingly entrenched positions between Gaza and Israel, Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi predicted a ceasefire is close at hand.

Speaking to reporters today in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig, Morsi said talks between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers will yield “positive results” in the coming hours — though he didn’t provide any evidence to support his optimistic viewpoint.

The US considers Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide and other attacks, to be a terror group and does not meet with its officials.

The Obama administration blames Hamas for the latest eruption of violence and says Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, it has warned against a ground invasion, saying it could send casualties spiraling.

The conflict erupted last week, when rocket fire from Gaza provoked Israel to strike back, killing Hamas’ military chief in an air attack and carrying out hundreds of assaults on militants’ underground rocket launchers and weapons stores.

The onslaught abruptly turned deadlier over the weekend as aircraft were ordered to go after Hamas military commanders and buildings suspected of housing their commands and weapons caches.

In the narrow alleys and warrens of crowded Gaza, where militants often operate from residential areas, civilian casualties mounted.

Civilians accounted for 54 of the 113 Palestinians killed since the operation began, according to estimates made today.

Some 840 people have been wounded, including 225 children, Gaza health officials said.

Earlier today, Israeli aircraft targeted another Hamas symbol of power, battering the headquarters of the bank senior Hamas officials set up to sidestep international sanctions on the militant group’s rule.

The inside of the bank, which was set up by leading Hamas members and describes itself as a private enterprise, was destroyed. A building supply business in the basement was damaged.

Owner Suleiman Tawil, 31, grimly surveyed the damage to his store and six company cars.

“I’m not involved in politics,” he said. “I’m a businessman. But the more the Israelis pressure us, the more we will support Hamas.”

Fuad Hijazi and two of his toddler sons were killed last night when missiles struck their one-story shack in northern Gaza, leaving a crater about seven to 10 feet deep in the densely populated neighborhood. Residents said the father was not a militant.

This morning, the boys’ bodies lay next to each other on a rack in the local morgue, wrapped tightly in white burial shrouds. Their father lay in a rack below.

“We want to tell the world which is supporting the state of Israel, what this state is doing,” said neighbor Rushdie Nasser.

“They are supporting a state that kills children … We want to send a message to the U.N. and the West: Enough of supporting the Zionists, who are killing children.”

At least three Israeli civilians have also been killed and dozens wounded since the fighting began last week, the numbers possibly kept down by a rocket-defense system that Israel developed with U.S. funding.

More than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel this week, the military said, including three that struck schools that had been emptied because of the fighting.

With tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers flooded to the Gaza border, awaiting a possible order to invade, world leaders ramped up their efforts to bring peace.

Germany’s foreign minister was also headed to the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Turkey’s foreign minister and a delegation of Arab League foreign ministers were to visit Gaza today.

Egypt — a traditional mediator between Israel and the Arab world — sent intelligence officials to meet separately in Cairo with an Israeli envoy and with Khaled Mashaal, the top Hamas leader in exile, to try to bridge the considerable differences.

Israel demands an end to rocket fire from Gaza and a halt to weapons smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt.

The Jewish state also wants international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt’s Sinai region, which abuts both Gaza and southern Israel, to attack Israelis.

Hamas wants Israel to halt all attacks on Gaza and lift tight restrictions on trade and movement in and out of the territory that have been in place since Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israel has rejected such demands in the past.

Mashaal told reporters yesterday that Hamas would only agree to a cease-fire if its demands are met.

“We don’t accept Israeli conditions because it is the aggressor,” he said. “We want a cease-fire along with meeting our demands.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel prefers to end this round of violence through diplomacy but insists the outcome would guarantee Israel long-term quiet along its border with Gaza.

“The declared purpose of this operation was to make rockets stop, once and for all, or at least for a very long time,” he said today, without specifying a timeframe. “All instruments have their limitations. But if the diplomatic path proves itself unuseful, then the only path that will be left is the military. But we hope to explore the diplomatic path to its full extent.”

Successive Israeli governments, meanwhile, have struggled to come up with an effective policy toward Hamas, which is deeply rooted in Gaza, a densely populated territory of 1.6 million.

Neither Israel’s economic blockade of the territory nor bruising military strikes have cowed Gaza’s Islamists, weakened their grip on the Palestinian strip their ability to fire rockets at the Jewish state.

An Israeli ground invasion would risk Israeli troop losses, and it could send the number of Palestinian civilian casualties ballooning — a toll Israel could be reluctant to risk just four years after its last invasion drew allegations of war crimes.

Still, with Israeli elections just two months away, polls show Israeli public sentiment has lined up staunchly behind the offensive Netanyahu’s government has launched.

Israel and Gaza’s militants have a long history of fighting, but the dynamics have changed radically since they last warred four years ago. Though their hardware is no match for the Israeli military, militants have upgraded their capabilities with weapons smuggled in from Iran and Libya, Israeli officials claim.

Only a few years ago, tens of thousands of Israelis were within rocket range. Today those numbers have swollen to 3.5 million, as the militants’ improved weapons allowed the unprecedented targeting of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem this week.

Hamas, a branch of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, is also negotiating from a stronger position than four years ago, when Israel launched a three-week war on the militants in Gaza.

At that time, Hamas was internationally isolated. But now, the Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt and Tunisia, and Hamas is also getting political support from Qatar and Turkey.

At home, too, the military offensive has shored up Hamas at a time when it was riven by internal divisions over its direction and the new Egyptian government’s refusal to lift the blockade it imposed along with Israel after Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

This newfound backing contrasts radically with the loss of stature the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has endured as Palestinians lose faith in his ability to bring them a state through negotiations with Israel.